Fresh cravings for a fresh MMORTS

I have lately found myself craving to once again play a fresh amazing MMORTS game with some grand Age of Empires reminiscent graphics for nostalgia purposes where I could invest some hours of my day fuelling my evil war machine – building my castle, managing resources and intrinsic upgrades, raising almighty armies from square one by looting and plotting against my enemies and co-opting strong allies.

After some research I came across Plarium’s latest game in the Stormfall series, Stormfall: Age of War. The game is a free to play browser-based empire building MMORTS which more than delivered what I was looking for. The game wonderfully immerses the player into the realm of Darkshrine (the former territory of a grand empire) along with its mythology, where the player assumes the role of a medieval lord tasked with managing his own castle – featuring an extensive quest system and high-fantasy setting.

The tutorial of the game is a most revitalizing (and outright near virtually rare in the genre) feature of Stormfall: Age of War – which is brilliantly voice narrated by ‘Lord Oberon’ , a quick-witted charming and entertaining character which makes the tutorial fun and immersive whilst also providing a hint of anecdotal fashion and runs the player though what is normally – let’s face it – a dull boring task of finding out where ‘all the buttons are’.

The graphic design is definitely one of the sensational features of Stormfall: Age of War as it brings about a wonderful and welcomed nostalgia along with the building and unit animations – unlike most games in this genre which provide the standard albeit now debatably stale ‘shiny’ graphics.

The gameplay is an absolute classic – manage your resources and learn the Dark Arts thus unlocking upgrades, defend your castle and use your tactical skills and limited raid allowances to loot from the most ‘suitable’ players and besiege other players in the realm successfully in order to acquire more resources and rewards of in-game currency whilst at the same time employing your diplomatic skills in group warfare by joining a renowned League of Players and participating in the political affairs therein ensuring allied troop support or battle with the AI controlled forces of the Horde of Balur. Additionally you can trade upgrade Scrolls and resources with other players or purchase extra Legendary Units from the Black Market.

Another striking feature is the combat feature – whilst the game provides varied and exciting unit classes, the game does not show the player the combat between the clashing armies – and unquestionably, many players will find this aspect rather invigorating as opposed to it being a shortcoming. Whether you have successfully or otherwise spied and raided an enemy or besieged his castle, the fact that the game does away with the combat visuals and simply presents the outcome stats is a welcomed change when compared to other games in this genre, such as Stronghold Kingdoms et al, which feature an altogether a tedious exercise in arranging the troops in the siege or raid, the outcome of which is all but absolutely unpredictable and strenuous.